


too late to go out, too young to stay in

by cjones7



Series: Riverdale Song Fics [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (that's blink and you'll miss it tho), Angst, Archie centric, Autistic Archie Andrews, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Prison Violence, Character Study, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Musician Archie Andrews, Pining, Self Loathing, Trauma, Unrequited Love, being gay in a small town should be a warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjones7/pseuds/cjones7
Summary: Archie sits on his bed with his guitar for the first time since he was fifteen, tired of using his hands, his mind, his open bleeding heart to wound, to fight, to hurt. He misses the gentle joy of creating, of shaping sounds into chords into bars into songs. As he plucks the strings, idly, snatches of tune here and there, nothing concrete, the faces of all the boys he’s loved and could never tell flit through his mind.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Joaquin DeSantos, Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones, Archie Andrews/Munroe "Mad Dog" Moore, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones (mentioned)
Series: Riverdale Song Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566859
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	too late to go out, too young to stay in

**Author's Note:**

> The problem with musician!Archie was never the plotline, it was the tonal inconsistency. Title from "Archie, Marry Me"; original by Alvvays, sad gay longing version by Flyte.

Archie sits on his bed with his guitar for the first time since he was fifteen, tired of using his hands, his mind, his open bleeding heart to wound, to fight, to hurt. He misses the gentle joy of creating, of shaping sounds into chords into bars into songs. As he plucks the strings, idly, snatches of tune here and there, nothing concrete, the faces of all the boys he’s loved and could never tell flit through his mind.

First: Jughead, before. Before everything changed, back when everything made sense. Jughead, before was a simple, sweet song. A nursery melody reworked into an upbeat folk ballad. Archie loved Jughead before he know what love was, his best, oldest friend. Loved him before he can even remember. His oldest memory is being little (4? 5? Time, like so much else, is fickle, fades and crinkles at the edges of remembrance.) and announcing to everybody at a backyard barbecue that he would marry Jughead, one day. His dad laughed, said it didn’t work like that, and while Archie knows what he thinks his dad meant, and didn’t mean, it kills him he can’t ask, can never be sure, now…. and then that is enough of _those_ thoughts--

And so: Joaquin. Poor dead Joaquin. Joaquin is a discordant melody, confusion, better played on a synthesizer than Archie’s guitar but as always he uses the tools he has on hand. He did not know Joaquin long, maybe really never _knew_ him, but that doesn’t mean he loved him any less. In a place like that, in a place they can kill you any time and no one will care, in a place the warden can send you to his bed to be branded, in a place where they can sell your body as a weapon, you take what sweetness you can get. And he had such sweetness with Joaquin. Enough he would’ve gladly died for him, had those bullets been real. And he does not blame him, not even a little, for trying to kill him. They got in his head, jumbled up his memory, his melody. Archie does not blame him, because out of all of them, Joaquin’s the only one he got to kiss.

Oh and then after the blood and the flight: Jughead, after. This Jughead is heavy bass, crashing percussion, a vocalist screaming his pain into the microphone. Archie cannot love him less for that. This was the Jughead he ran away with, the Jughead he slept beside, showered with, walked thousands of mild side by side. The Jughead he knows intimately, his smell, the sounds he makes in his sleep, his silent moods; but this Jughead is not for him. When Gladys asked if they’re together, he tried not to flinch; when he sent Jughead back to Riverdale. This is Betty’s Jughead, he knows. His Jughead is lost, gone with all simplicities of childhood. Archie’s fingers play a new tune.

And now: Munroe. As much as Archie hates to say it, as cliche as it seems, Archie knows it’s true, and so do his fingers, playing out the song, Munroe is nothing less than an old school, 80s style power ballad. Passionate and centering, all in one. Munroe gets him, saw the same things he saw. He need not worry about censoring himself, about hiding his scars, his nightmares. They can sleep side by side in the gym, or more often than not--not sleep, play cards all night, and talk or not talk. Monroe’s heart is not spoken for, or lost to him, in thrall to powers beyond Archie’s control. Munroe is: a second in command, a shoulder to cry on, a left hand, a much needed voice of reason, a reminder why Archie doesn’t just let go and drift into the dark. If a beautiful boy with rough hands and soft eyes can look at him like he’s everything good in the world, well, maybe it’s worth trying to make that true. And if this _particular_ soft eyed boy looks at well--maybe, just this once, it’s safe to look back.

Archie plays his song to finish, and for the first time in a long time, starts writing down the notes. He thinks he might take his guitar down to the dym, see what the boys there think. See what Munroe thinks. He thinks maybe to stop being angry, he has to stop being scared first. And sometimes--when he’s with Munroe--he forgets to be afraid. He thinks this song might be that feeling made manifest. And maybe playing it, sharing it, is the first step to speaking that safety into existence.

Archie readies his pen. He begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Autistic Archie is tagged bc I always write Archie as autistic. It's not obvious here but then we aren't always obvious now are we? Jughead/Betty just tagged so people can filter the one mention of it.


End file.
